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Does Microsoft really care about PC gamers?

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
I am a PC gamer at heart, and have been since about 1992 when I got to try my wealthy friend's Commodore 64. I have owned quite a few consoles as well, but if I could get the game on PC, I played it on PC. Over the years, Microsoft has published many of my favorite PC games (Motocross Madness 1&2, Monster Truck Madness 1&2, Midtown Madness 1&2, Microsoft Flight Sim series, Halo 1&2, Gears of War, Train Simulator, Fable, ect...). For all the awesome titles they put out, there has been a noticeable downward trend for quite some time. Looking at the Microsoft Games Wiki, 2004 was the start of this downward trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Microsoft_Studios

Being that the Xbox came out a couple years prior to this downward trend, this tells me they viewed PC gaming as direct competition to their console market and decided to pull back on making PC games for the most part. The amount of titles directly reflects this decision.

With the recent revival of VR, Microsoft is thrusting themselves into the PC gaming picture again. But are their actions actually matching their statements? They keep repeating "we care about PC gaming", yet the only thing I have seen thus far is the ability to stream a Xbox One to my Windows 10 PC (totally pointless waste of resources) and a Xbox One controller with the consumer Rift :roll:. These are not the actions of a company that wants to push PC gaming, these are the actions of a company trying to push a console.

And lets take a look at the latest console. The Xbox One itself is a hodgepodge all-in-one multimedia unit that is good at doing many things but not that great at doing the most important thing it should be doing, and that is playing games. The PS4 beats the Xbox one in every important gaming area from specs to FPS (not to mention all the awesome exclusive titles). The PS4 will have an actual VR interface next year that will provide real VR experiences, and a Virtual cinema can't hold a candle to that. I still love my Xbox 360 dearly and play it daily, but it isn't trying to be an all-in-one media unit. It does exactly what it needs to do, and does it well.

Next year will finally be the year of consumer VR, and Microsoft is showing up late to yet another ballgame. They lost out on MP3 players (Zune fail), Smart Phones (Nokia fail), and are again behind the ball on the next big technological breakthrough (Virtual Cinema fail). People are looking for the next great gaming experience, and the Star Citizen crowd funding campaign is directly a result of that. They are nearing 100 million dollars of pledge money and the game isn't even done yet! You can't tell me there isn't a PC gaming market, we have put our money where our mouths are!

Instead of providing VR Cinema Xbox streaming that totally defeats the purpose of PC VR and teasing things like "Halo 5 might come out on PC someday", they need to step up and actually do something for the PC gaming community. If you build it, they will come!
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified
91 REPLIES 91

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
You're right but I think it's a case of poor direction at these events. Microsoft still clings to the purporting of their ecosystem as a way to entice the audience, even though its been said time and time again people don't want that - well not at E3, Gamescom etc. They want wall to wall games because ultimately that's what they are there for. Problem is if you look at their conference quite a bit was already well known even if lacking in details.

Dead Rising 4 was already leaked.
Scorpio leaked
Xbox One S leaked
Gears of War 4 - we've had a beta already
Merging of the Xbox and Windows has already happened.
Minecraft is a pretty old game now regardless of how its presented.
Coloured controllers - irrelevant like Xbox 360 faceplates.
Recore was revealed last year as was Scalebound
We happy Few has been around the block on PC for some time now.
And they keep showing that indie game Cuphead for the last two years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIuV0nfE65I

Edit: Just watching that video you can clearly see there's a lot of stuff they lingered on for too long. Clubs, Arena, Cortana, background music. The Minecraft announcement could have been a 30 sec segment not 5 minutes of gameplay. The Gwent card game was niche and not worth the time spent and the Battlefield 1 moot seeing as EA already showcased it at their own event.

OMG where does one begin with the Tekken 7 on Xbox announcement and the FF XV gameplay. There seems to be a poor relationship with Japanese developers of late so now making a point of their relationship with games already announced for PS4 is poor showing.





System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
Totally agreed.  Their marketing department needs a bit of work.
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
 I used to be Editor of a UK Xbox website for a number of years which had some great backing from Microsoft (I still do have a solid relationship with them) and they really pushed the marketing to insane levels post Xbox 1 moving into Xbox 360 territory.  They were the underdogs against Sony and Nintendo and spent millions on getting into the gamer mindset. Remember the XO events they used to host,  J.Allard, Origen campaign, The Zero Hour Event in LA, The Peter Moore days with the GTA fake tats (I interviewed him at Tokyo Game Show believe it or not). There was a massive push with getting the brand out there. But they seem to have lost that same spark now they are more established and their approach to marketing games has changed considerably since then. In fact gamers have changed considerably given the rise and popularity of social media platforms - especially Facebook and Youtube.

There's lots to like about Microsoft of today and I believe they are heading in a good direction but there's a cloud of complacency hanging over them I feel since the Don Mattrick rubbish when they announced the Xbox One. They have recovered from that PR nightmare with Phil Spencer as the front man but still, there's a long way for them to go. I'm hoping with the ballsy move of announcing "the most powerful console ever made" which reminds me of the old N64 marketing speak they will regain some more deserved recognition from the wider non-xbox owning community, and with PC integration built into their ecosystem too it holds much promise indeed.

I guess it's watch this space with them.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Microsoft Game Studios made Dungeon Siege... and that was some great multiplayer fun on the PC. They care, bra!

One thing that worries me a little about PC/xbox cross-platform support is whether it will adversely affect PC games.

If developers decide that a good deal of money is now on offer from their games being instantly compatible with both sets of hardware... will they concentrate on getting those game playing nicely on the console and put PC second.

Console games tend to have a smaller hard-drive footprint.. which means more frequent (but possibly shorter) screen loading.

They also have different control types... ok the xbox will have kbm support but most console users will stick with controllers I think cos that's what's easy to use and comfortable when you're sitting on a sofa 8ft from the tv... consequently, the game controls are perfected for controller with PCs given poor control implementations (I'm seeing this with Fallout 4).

Menu's and UI styles tend to be larger and more simplistic for console games as they need to be seen typically from a further distance. 

And the games tend to be designed to be easier & quicker to pick up and put down cos that's what console gamers tend to want more than PC gamers (there may be something on the TV worth watching in 30 mins).

I'm still smarting from playing Deus Ex Invisible War, the shockingly bad console game ported to PC.. that was the follow up to possibly the greatest PC game of all time... oh the humanity!

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Ports are historically terrible, because it is often 3rd party groups that are hired to do the port... which is on par with hiring a 3rd party business to run your call center 😮

The quality of the port is certainly a factor @Zenbane... but worse than that is the developers decision to design first for console... then make it work on PC, rather than the other way round!

Good or bad port... you can always recognise a game designed for console.

Discuss.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Indeed, I couldn't agree more. Granted, my introduction to gaming began with the Atari 2600, then the NES followed by SNES. But once I hit my first PC Game (WarCraft 2 via MS-DOS); I never looked back.

The consoles I own now happened either due to sheer curiosity or because the family enjoys them. PC gaming is far more sophisticated. I remember when Elder Scrolls: Oblivion seemed to be designed for the console - that was a huge disappointment.

I agree that the two platforms are too different to apply an effective "port." It's like trying to take a Tonka truck to a real construction work site :#

Hanover
Rising Star
Next Step:  XBOX OS

If that ever became a thing, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in GabeN's office when it was announced.  🙂

cybereality
Grand Champion
Quantum Break is actually pretty good.
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